18 June 2010

Banned aphorisms, not for internal consumption. Written by my evil twin in the dead of night.

Virtually everyone in the world is either a deluded zombie working under remote control; or a sociopathic sadist glorying in the debasement and humiliation of others. A monster, or a willing or unwilling collaborator with monsters.

Small achievements count for nothing.

Success on the terms of this world is simultaneously an imperative; AND requires unacceptable compromises with the forces of evil.

Happiness = selling out, unacceptable compromises. If happiness is possible in this world, this means that this world is acceptable, which it clearly is not. Choosing to be happy means choosing to give up the fight and thus becoming a collaborator with those forces of evil.

15 June 2010

The ego tries to remake the world according to its own self-perceptions. The ego will expect others to be friends with the same people we perceive as good and stay away from folks we see as bad. The ego will try to convince others of religious, political or other viewpoints. The arrogant ego will try to force others to be complimentary. The negative ego will see every bump in life's road as proof of their unworthiness.

Perhaps killing the ego is more along the lines of killing the desire to create 'proof' of personal perceptions. Perhaps it is closer to killing the need to force the world to fit within our parameters.

I know, for example, that my own ego - or nafs - is intent on being the greatest genius in the room, and spends its existence in bitter, ranting anger that the Real World of Horrible Jobs doesn't conform to its desires, bowing down to acknowledge its mistress.

There was a certain potentate who had taken to stockpiling chemical weapons - mustard gas, sarin, you name it - in the cellars under his city.

This took up a lot of the city's budget, and in consequence the city was kind of run down and unattractive. Also, over time these chemical nasties had begun seeping into the water supply, causing all manner of health issues for the citizens.

All of this, thought the potentate, was worth it, in that now any enemy who tried to attack the city would get an extremely nasty surprise. For the potentate kept this stockpile secret - if anyone knew of his weapons cache, he thought, they would instantly retaliate with deadly, possibly nuclear force. So it didn't even have the deterrent effect that such WMDs often do.

All that the city's neighbours knew was that this city was run-down and dirty, and the people who lived there seemed suspicious and unwell. This, as you can imagine, did nothing for the tourist industry or for inwards investment, so things in general did not get better.

The potentate would wake up screaming in the night, occasionally, with terrible nightmares of his city being destroyed for lack of WMDs. Or because his neighbours found out about the WMDs. As he saw it, he was damned if he did and damned if he didn't change strategies.

I renounce this statement: "The use of the term 'revolution' should not imply that this well be a class-based effort." What was I thinking? I was trying too hard to recruit the already existing members of the Media into the project. Venezuela has proved this original premise to be wrong: I now believe that only a class struggle can beat the Media. This is the most vital change in strategy and thinking since 1997. And it changes much about the project as it begins anew in the Summer of 2002.

A very good point too. April 13 2002 should be the final proof that - despite all the magick spells weaved by the media priesthood and the creative class, who think themselves not only enlightened but all-powerful - filthy, unwashed, uneducated cleaners, busdrivers, street vendors and stay-at-home mums are not only the only ones who can really change anything, but who indeed have any interest in doing so.

We educated specimens are so unbelievably addicted to our self-image as the enlightened élite that we become part of the problem. An unrecognized genius is still a genius; a fallen angel is still an angel. Anyone who really hopes to speak for the voice of The Masses has to stop thinking of themselves as anything but The Masses.

09 June 2010

And I thought I was the only one crazy enough to use the metaphor of the media priesthood:

The cultic aspects of corporate consumerism have been evident as far back as the Ford
Sociological Department, but recently there has been an shameless and enthusiastic commercial promotion of cultic psychology because “the smartest marketers have realized that it is possible for communities to be formed around brands” as Atkin argues in his 2004 marketing manifesto The Culting of Brands where he tells our future business leaders “You are a priest, not a brand manager.”

(Our culture MAY BE in trouble when we’ve lost the ability to create community out of relationships with other people, and instead respond primarily to commercial priests who gather us around their mass-produced sacred objects – in safely gated communities no doubt. (can anyone say “pass the Kool-Aid?”see “don’t drink the punch”)

Though The Church of the SubGenius is rarely explicitly political nor aligned with a discernible single politics, it is in synch with a creative power that is alive and well in the global anti-capitalist movement, according to we are everywhere edited by Notes from Nowhere where a return to the invitingly joyful subversions possible in
embodiment and “Carnival” are replacing the dull outdated revolutionary paradigms of grim, sober service to a duplicate disciplinary cause – “meet the new boss, same as the old boss.”

If only I shared his optimism. The Church of the SubGenius put a banner on the top of their website in March 2003 saying "BOB" SUPPORTS THE COALITION TROOPS. I don't blame Stang for doing that - doing anything else would have alienated many dues-paying SubGenius Troo Warriors For Freedom, who - all joking aside - recognized the need to stop goofing around and support brave President Bush and his mission to kill thousands of Iraqis as an act of primitive primate dominance. But it shows exactly the limits of the One True Church - as those Discordian readers of this blog keep telling me, Discordianism isn't supposed to be a revolutionary party, and neither is SubG. SubG is supposed to be a means for Stang to make a living so he can promote mutant networking fulltime, and it's very good in that respect.

As for "grim sober service" - that's all that works. Churchill and Roosevelt didn't defeat Hitler and Tojo because they were the good guys, but because they could mobilise brute force better over the medium term. If you don't mobilise your forces, you lose. If you don't become symmetrical to an enemy, you can't defeat them. You can't win in this world except on the terms of the Prince Of This World. Gandhi and MLK were brutally assassinated, while Joe Stalin lived to a ripe old age. If you don't take on the Black Iron Prison in its own terms, it will tolerate you living in your little clubhouse and playing at being cowboys, anarchists and witches... as long as you are no real threat. I am increasingly convinced that being miserable is the only sign that you're actually making a change in the real world. It is impossible to achieve the aim without suffering, but you can choose your own suffering.